Saisoto's NCIS: The Comic
by Aeidhryn
Summary: Tony arrives at Gibbs' house one night, bruised and guilty, needing to talk. McGee's in the hospital, and Ziva isn't talking to him. Somehow, hilarity ensues. No slash. Saisoto's comic brought to you with a few extra details added, but overall, intact.


Disclaimer: NONE OF THIS IS MINE. This is a fic version of Saisoto's NCIS comic, and has been "published" with her permission. Right now, she's on hiatus, kind of, which means that the plot of this story is also on hiatus until whenever she decides.

It's one o'clock, moonlessly dark outside and raining. The wind howls, screams and wails its way through tree branches. The only light comes in small pools let off by the streetlamps, making small islands of sidewalk and grass before fading into the never-ending sea of blackness.

Gibbs is still awake, of course, carefully sanding the skeleton of his latest boat. The bourbon is his only company. The doorbell rings.

Going upstairs, he wonders why someone would ring the bell at this time of night. Anyone that knows him well enough to visit him in the middle of the night should also know that he leaves his door unlocked; but then again, things have _not _been normal lately. If you could call Gibbs' usual ways of living "normal". He opens the door.

The man outside is holding a bottle in one hand. The other arm is in a cast. He's battered and bruised and looks forlorn, standing there against the fathomless night, but a split second after Gibbs opens the door, he's smiling and unconsciously shrugging, shoulders moving up in a gesture of nervousness.

"Oh, hey, boss. I was passing by and I thought…" Tony gauges Gibbs' reaction. Gibbs' face is blank (as Tony knows he should have expected). "That we could have a drink, maybe a talk, you know?" His smile widens in desperation. Gibbs just keeps staring.

Tony drops all previous attempts to look smilingly ingratiating and just stands there now, looking away. "Not such a good idea, huh?"

"Why did you ring the bell?"

"Well, I had the feeling that, this time, I needed permission to go in." He stops talking. Wants Gibbs to say something. Waits. Thinks about how itchy the rain is making his arm through his cast. Waits some more. Eventually, the stretched-out silence snaps, becoming unbearable. You can't ever force Gibbs to talk. Especially not through silence. You can't beat the master at his own game.

"Guess I don't have it," he says, turning his head away so Gibbs can't see the look on his face. He doesn't know where to go or what to do next, so he keeps talking. "It's pretty late, you must be tired. I sure am." When Gibbs doesn't react to his hint, he gives up.

"I know how you feel about apologies, but I really am sorry," he says softly to the rain, turning his head so Gibbs can hear him but not wanting to look, afraid of what he might see. "I know that I'm impulsive and can't keep my mouth shut… but…" He turns around all the way this time to fully appreciate … no one listening. "This is going to do wonders for my self-esteem," he mumbles to himself, then winces. He has bruises on bruises, and besides, that wasn't even very funny. Actually, it's not funny at all. Looking out at the inhospitable torrent of rain, he sighs.

"DON'T DRIP ON THE CARPET!" roars Gibbs, halfway back down the stairs.

Tony drops the bottle and almost falls over. It rolls down the sidewalk steps with a little 'bomp bomp' sound. The rain and wind are deafening, so he can't tell if there's a crash.

"Was that an invitation?" Tony sounds like he's in shock.

"Must be," he tells himself, closing the door behind him.

"Let's see what you brought me," says Gibbs from the basement.

"…crap," mutters Tony on his way down the stairs.

oOo

"Thanks for the shirt and the towel, boss," Tony calls on his second trip down the stairs that night.

"Don't mention it," Gibbs says, screwing the top back onto a bottle. He turns around and hands Tony a glass.

"What, no hot cocoa?" asks Tony glibly, with a smile. His newfound state of cleanliness has much improved his humor. Plus, he doesn't have to look to know what's in that glass.

"How's McGee doing?" asks Gibbs, cutting short Tony's banter and heading straight for the point.

"He's fine. I left him at the hospital. They wanna keep him overnight."

"Ziva?" asks Gibbs, taking a sip of his bourbon as he watches Tony carefully.

Tony looks away. "Well, I don't know, she doesn't talk to me."

"She doesn't talk to you, or you don't talk to her?"

Tony stops looking utterly fascinated with the vague shapes in his peripheral vision, looks at his cup as if discovering it for the first time, and drains the whole thing.

"A little bit of both, I guess," he replies, handing Gibbs the empty cup.

"Have you seen her?" Gibbs refills the cup and turns around.

"No, yes, well…" Tony reaches for the full cup. "I saw her back while she walked away." He tilts his head back to chug his second glass, but somehow the rest of his body tilts with it. He would fall backwards like a cut tree but for Gibbs, who darts forwards and grabs his scarf, keeping him upright, exclaiming, "Hey, whoa!"

"I'm fine, boss," Tony says. It's not the first or last time he's going to lie like that, body swaying to contradict his words, face bruised, bones broken, and heart...

"Don't worry, I can hold my liquor," he adds somewhere in Gibbs' arms. He doesn't know how he got there. He's not sure why he's trying to assure sober, clean, unflappable, unbroken Gibbs. But he is.

"Can you say the same thing about painkillers?"

Silence.

"How many?" Tony can't see him, so Gibbs smiles, one side of his mouth quirked, the other a straight line.

"Let me see…" Tony lurches forward. "One, two, three…"

Gibbs starts guiding him towards the living room. "The couch is calling your name."

"…four, five, six..." Tony is still counting when he passes out. Gibbs gets him there just in time.

oOo

Tony snores. Gibbs stares. This is how they've been spending most of the night. What's left of it, anyway.

Unexpectedly, his phone vibrates. He picks it up and feels a small, secret sense of pride when he can actually open the text and read it.

From: Abby: Is he with you? Is he all right?

She walks along the hallway, looking for a door. Door 206. There it is. She reaches for the doorknob. Her phone vibrates.

From: SilverFox: Yes.

She smiles to herself. He really did pay attention to lesson number five… six… was it four?

Hmm. Meh, never mind that, because there is McGee on the hospital bed, sleeping. Sleeping, sore no doubt, and with a black eye and a cut over it.

"You know what? You and Tony are lucky guys, McGee," she tells him. He doesn't stir; it doesn't matter. She explains while taking off her jacket. "You both have people that care about you. A lot." In the morning, he won't remember anything, she reasons, so she kisses him on the forehead.

oOo

"Umf."

Tony cracks open his eyes, feels the morning stubble on his chin. "Huh?"

"Hmm. Where am I?" he asks, scratching his head, as though the world is going to provide him with answers. His elbow hits the pillow behind him. A pillow. A pillow, and he's not in a bed, he's on a …

"DAMMIT!" He flings the blanket off and sits up abruptly.

"Arg," he says, describing succinctly and accurately what he is feeling at the moment. He scratches his arm. Now that the blanket's off, he's a bit cold. "This is so not what I had in mind." He folds the blanket as best as he can with one arm. "It seems that I can't help but mess things up. Falling asleep on Gibbs' couch, in Gibbs' house. Brilliant."

Using an awkward combination of hand, teeth, and leg, yes, leg, he manages to put his jacket. He then stalks off, unreasonably irascible beyond words and knowing it.

"At least I didn't wake Gibbs up," he thinks. "That would have been the icing on the cake."

Gibbs watches him drive off in a cab from an upper window.

"Always doing things the hard way," he says to himself. _Click. Click. Click. _He dials his new phone. It's actually lasted for some time. Maybe he'll manage to keep it, somehow.

"Hello?" says a slightly sleepy voice on the other end.

"Ziva? This is Gibbs…"

oOo

There is nothing. Just an annoyingly long hall. No other life. He might as well be on Mars, Tony concludes glumly. No, wait! There's a potted plant. Ha.

Maybe the painkillers also killed his sense of humor.

When he reaches apartment number 202 at last, he breathes a sigh of relief.

"Finally."

But apparently, there is no rest for the wicked. Instead, there is shuffling around any number of keys on a giant keychain with one hand, trying to remember which one is the one that he wants.

"I should rearrange this. I have more keys than a landlord," he tells himself.

"Need a hand with that?" says a familiar voice behind him.

"AH!" He half-turns, then turns right back around again and slumps against the door. He didn't actually see her face, but he already knows who it is.

"You should stop doing that. I don't need a heart attack on top of everything else," he mumbles into the painted wood of the door.

Ziva's hand, nimble and warm, pins his to the door and extracts his key ring.

"Your heart is perfectly fine, Tony," she says, unlocking the door in no time at all. "Maybe a little confused, that is all."

He isn't surprised. He'd rather expected something like that coming. She is a ninja, after all. Then a thought occurs to him.

"Hey! How did you know which one was the right one?"

Click. She turns on the light, and he gets no reply. Grumbling, he follows her, closing the door behind him.

"It's not that I don't appreciate you being here, but… why are you here?" Though he tries to keep his voice joking as an escape route of sorts, he's genuinely confused. Shouldn't she be scolding him at this point? Delivering some sort of physical abuse? Maybe holding a knife to his throat? 'Cause last time it was a gun, and he's not so sure that this time is any better than last time.

"Gibbs called, told me you'd be at home, so I decided to come over since you're pretty useless with that arm of yours." She helps him take off his coat.

"That's…nice of you." Though he tries to make the statement ironic, he's still confused. He scratches his head. Maybe she's going to ambush him, or something? His mind is still a little muddled from the painkillers. He feels as though he can't keep up, and hates it.

"We're friends, Tony. What did you expect?" she asks serenely, hanging the coat on its appropriate peg. He would ask her how she knows where to put it, but that is probably as glaringly obvious as how she knew which key to use, i.e. the key with the number 202 engraved in it.

"Not for you to come, and Gibbs to care, that's for sure." He wants to let her know he's grateful for these small kindnesses that loom so large, grateful, though he knows he doesn't deserve it.

Something sparks in her eyes. He's not sure what or why, but he's pretty sure he's given away important intel (there's his NCIS vocabulary kicking in again, it never stops) that perhaps she hadn't thought of.

"Waaaaaaait a minute." She leans towards him, hands on hips.

Oh, boy. Here it comes.

"You weren't thinking we're mad at you, were you?"

Uh, yes, I was.

"You aren't?" he says, trying to make sure as the world spins under his feet.

"I'm starting to be," she says, giving him the annoyed flashing eyes that normally make him either delighted or frightened. Or both. Looks like he's stepped out of the frying pan and straight into the fire. Oddly enough, he feels a wee bit of the warm and fuzzies inside. Is that why?

oOo

"Here comes the plane!" cries Abby, maneuvering the spoon of hospital goo in as many crazy shapes as she can without spilling any and making baby faces at McGee.

"Come on, Abby, I'm perfectly capable of feeding myself," he grins. They both know he loves it. Still, he can't let the old side down. If Gibbs, or worse, Tony, saw this, he'd never hear the end of it.

"Deal with me, McGee, I've been very preoccupied since all this started," she says, correctly guessing the reasons behind his weak denial and happily willing to take all the blame for whatever type of sin this is in the eyes of men.

Then her phone rings. Correction, sings.

_Wants not the glimpse of the sun/Wandering, my pretty hides, _warbles Shikhee.

At first, McGee is startled, but then he relaxes. Android Lust. A little piece of Abby's lab that made its way into her phone.

"Hold this, I need my hands," she says, shoving the spoon in his unprepared mouth, mind already on the next task. After years of multitasking, juggling bullets, fingerprints, blood spatters, and goodness knows what else life decides to throw at her (baby doll heads, maggots, feathers, rope-mold) Abby knows how to switch from one to another in milliseconds.

"Hey! It's Zi," she tells him. He might have something to say about that, but whatever it is, it's lost in the great glob of pseudo-vegetable that's about to make him the first NCIS agent to die in a hospital from the food.

"Hi Zi!" she exclaims, as happy and bubbly and _Abby _as can be.

"You were right."

McGee extracts the perilous spoon with minimal gagging.

"Of course I was," beams Abby. Then she thinks for a minute.

"About what, exactly?"

"He blames himself for all that has happened." Ziva likes watching the _him _in question sleep.

"Of course he does," says Abby, sounding a little deflated. "How is he?"

"Sleeping." Ziva smiles gently and cradles the phone in the crook of her shoulder.

"Zi?" asks Abby after a minute.

Ziva twists a short strand of tangled hair around her finger.

"He's a cutie when he's sleeping, isn't he?" says Abby coyly, looking towards McGee as she says it.

"What?" Ziva jerks involuntarily with surprise and accidentally yanks out a hair.

"Ugh?" mutters Tony. His hand goes up to his head. "What? Ziva…? What?"

"I was just checking on you," she assures him with an over-smiley smile which she knows will take a lot of painkiller-doziness on his part to pass off. "See? All in place." She pats him on the head a couple times. He stares for a minute. The need for sleep tips the battle in her favor.

"Okay," he mutters, and turns away, pulling up the covers.

oOo

McGee changes his shirt and buttons up his coat as soon as he can, because he's still a little cold from getting out of bed.

"Come on, McGee. We're leaving."

He automatically freaks out, grabbing the nearest chair (chairs, in this case). "Don't look!"

Gibbs him the Gibbs Stare™. Then he puts a foot on the seat of the chair and leans in close.

"You know that I'm pretty used to seeing you in your boxers, don't you?"

"I do, boss," says McGee, shivering.

"Do you think that this would be less awkward if I took off my pants and showed you mine?" growls Gibbs.

"No…boss," says McGee, terrified.

Then Abby breezes in. "Hey guys. What's taking you so long?"

She takes in the whole situation at a glance, and grins.


End file.
